Mario Hernandez (comics)

Mario Hernandez (born 1953 in Oxnard, California) is an American writer, artist, and sometime publisher of comics. Along with his younger brothers Gilbert and Jaime he co-created the acclaimed independent comic book Love and Rockets.

As children, Mario (the eldest of six children) and his siblings were voracious comic readers, a habit encouraged by their mother, who had loved comics during her own childhood. Eventually, their enthusiasm for the medium led the youngsters to begin writing and drawing comics themselves for fun, collaborating with one another and sharing their own individual creations. As they grew older, Mario discovered girls and mostly abandoned his drawing hobby, but Jaime and Gilbert remained committed and prolific, accumulating hundreds of pages of increasingly sophisticated and personal work. Eventually, Mario noticed what his brothers had been up to and was so impressed by their comics that he encouraged them to try to get published. In 1982 Mario instigated and self-published a black and white comic book of his and his brothers' work, the original version of Love and Rockets #1. It was sold at that year's San Diego Comicon and by mail order, and advertised in comics fanzines. A copy of the issue was submitted to The Comics Journal for review, the brothers reasoning that if they could endure the Journal's notoriously harsh criticism, they were ready for anything. To their surprise, they received not only a positive review, but an offer from the Journal's publisher Fantagraphics to publish their work. The brothers agreed, and Fantagraphics published a slightly revised reprint version of the self-published issue, featuring a new full-color cover, as the first issue of an ongoing Love and Rockets series. The title quickly found a cult audience and became a key title in the 1980s independent comics movement, developing into a highly influential early example of what came to be known as "alternative" or "art" comics.

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